Menu

Seven Quickies: Independent Edition

Thanks to Jen, who is the wonderful hostess for Seven Quick Takes Friday.

My baby is turning eight on Sunday. EIGHT! When I look at her, snaggle-toothed and all, I realize that she is growing up fast. Really fast. Gone is ALL baby fat, and entering is this beautiful girl, graceful and tall. Holy cow. Travel Man says he’s in big trouble with our two girls. Beautiful, confident, poised … we’re awfully proud of them. They’re just growing up so fast.

Speaking of growing up, did I mention that Big Girl is getting a figure? Yeah, I noticed it earlier than Travel Man, who saw her in her bathing suit earlier in the summer and reacted with much distress. (Okay, not much distress, but that sounded better in my head that way.) I looked into Theology of the Body for Teens, but she is SO not ready for some of the subject matter there. Lesson one of that got right into “My friend said she ‘did it’ with her boyfriend and he doesn’t call her,” and “He said he’d love me more if we had sex.” Yeah…I need help, but that’s still above where we are. She’s not even 11 yet! But I do need to start in on more things from TOB, and I am afraid that I am learning as we go, too. Studying for me is in order this summer.

By the way, in case you were wondering, I have no solid position on the Christopher West hubub. I think he was not careful enough to measure his wording in that interview – he should have known that they’d be selective and crop things and twist them to make it more sensational – but I also am certain that he is not perfect when it comes to teaching on Pope John Paul II’s lessons. No one is. So I’ll take what’s good about it and use it, and borrow from plenty of other sources (including the enormous Theology of the Body book I have with all of the pope’s discussions). Plus, I’ll be praying for help and guidance on the whole thing. After all, I never learned about it before, and I certainly know that the world is trying to teach everyone the molecular opposite of TOB. God has a much better plan for our lives, including our sex lives, than the world. The big challenge is helping my children understand it better than I did (or do).

I am counting down days until my vacation. The girls go on a trip with my parents and their cousins (“Grandma and Pa Pa Vacation”) at least once a year, and this year, Travel Man and I are going to take a week off at the same time and have a vacation, too! (Usually, we send the girls off and work while they’re gone.) We’ve had weekends alone, but not a whole week since our tenth anniversary – nearly six years ago. So the girls will be going to Pompano Beach, FL, and we’ll be in Orlando. We’re hoping to have lunch or dinner with family and friends in the area a couple times, take a day to visit Leu Gardens, and mostly laze about the pool with stacks and stacks of books. ahhhhhh… relaxation!

Travel Man and I watched Office Space last night. He found it on DVD with a digital copy at Sam’s for under $6. I have only watched it once before, maybe twice, and it seems to be longer than then approximately 90 minutes. It’s a very odd film. Very. Maybe I just don’t get it because I’ve never been cubicle bound. I do, on the other hand, relate to the flair thing. (I worked for Friday’s for nearly five years.) I did get a kick out of the old computers, though. I guess working with them so much for the last year has given me an appreciation of how far they’ve come. Old Compaq’s with 3.5″ floppy drives and Word Perfect. Niiiiice. The scene where he’s trying to shut down at the end of the day on Friday cracks me up. I remember that…waiting to get back to DOS so you can turn off the computer.

Our family has been saying the Rosary together each day since coming back from the IHM conference. We’ve only missed two days in the two weeks since then, but it’s been really nice. Time well spent. Once this is comfortable, I might see about adding some of the Liturgy of the Hours. (Shhhhh…I haven’t told Travel Man that part yet.) But we do light candles and turn on a CD of chant (from the same Carmelites that bring you what The Anchoress rightly calls “Liquid Crack”: Mystic Monk Coffee).